Thx gchart!
Although ZL driver layout is a modder nightmare it’s still a joy working on it.
Hello, I finally made the first modification to my BLF Q8.
Simple thing, I just went around the springs. I thought it was going to improve 10 or 15% but I didn’t notice any difference.
Is it the batteries? I use 3000 mah Sofirn batteries but I don’t know what the discharge is. I’m hoping to get Samsung 20A Q30 batteries. I imagine the result will be visible.
Could someone tell me the next simple change I could make?
Been modding some magnetic ring lights in recent weeks. None of these are pocket rockets compared to modern lights but they are fun to mod:
- Sunwayman V11R camo - currently modded into a triple using Carclo 10507 optic and 3x LH351D Dog Farts (2x 4000K and 1x 5000K). Soooo floody and not very bright. Thinking of dedoming one or more of the emitters for a bit more punch. Or maybe going back to a single emitter. The ring was loose so I fixed it by adding a thin plastic spacer and relubing the ring with high vacuum grease. Also replaced the stock switch with metal titanium one. Switch electronics replaced with Steve Ku electronic switch module. Also added extra spring and tuned the switch so it won’t switch on accidentally.
- Jetbeam TCR-01 - now sporting 5000K neutral white LH351D Dog Farts. Also added Lee Zircon minus-green 805 filter. Beam looks decent. Nice tint, but still cooler than what I’m used to.
- Nitecore SRT-3 Defender - picked one of these up on sale. Fantastic build quality, but as an 8-year old relatively low-powered light it lacks some modern features. For example, the star is relatively thin and small and is aluminum. Stock cool-white XML2 emitter was too dim and too cool for me. I replaced it with a 5000K neutral white SST-40 reflowed onto the stock star. This one was tricky to reflow since the red-blue aux LED was mounted on a separate donut shaped board that sat on top of the main star. There are 4 or 5 tiny wires connecting the underside of the aux board to the driver and those wires did not seem long enough to remove the aux board. There was no way I wanted to try desoldering those tiny wires. I ended up tilting up the aux board then reaching through the center of the donut with my iron to desolder the main LED wires.
Build quality of the SRT-3 feels excellent. It feels great in the hand and works well with a cigar grip. Feels higher quality than the Sunwayman or aluminum Jetbeam. Downside is its huge. Even though it uses a 16340 it is actually bigger than a number of 18650 lights I own.
- Sunwayman V11R black. Picked this up from Amazon last year on clearance. Replaced the stock rubber switch boot with the stock steel switch button that came with the light. Also swapped out the cool white XML2 for a neutral white SST-40.
From what I can recall, replacing the screws with brass (or maybe brass-coated? I can't recall for sure) screws shows some improvement. I'm referring to the screws that attach the tail-spring board.
Because of how Clayson soldered the bypasses to the contact area of the pcb, brass screws likely won’t provide a measurable improvement. I would still recommend them however in conjunction with a slight adjustment of your mod.
I’d recommend moving your solder point slightly towards the center by scraping off some of the masking and allowing the pcb to sit flush with the body tube again. Contact resistance is now likely your largest ohmic contributor at this point. Other things to improve that would be adding Ag/Au plated contact pads to the springs. Anything over 50% IACS and flat should be better/more stable in the long run vs a solder blob, especially if there is lingering flux residue on the contact points. I’ll often take a fine flat file and smooth out solder in cases that I don’t add an additional interface material.
The biggest easy improvement I think you could get in terms of output would be using a 25S/H26 cell.
I don’t know what emitters you have in your Q8 (XPL?), but a swap to something low Vf like XPL2, SST40, Luxeon V, XHP50.2 3V could really bump the current up.
Overall though, I think it’s important to realize that the visual differences between 4000 and 5000 lumens is so small, that it’s hard to tell except in back to back comparisons.
I was making a convoy s2+ triple with some SST-20-DR's with Mtn triple mcpcb soldered to one of kiribaru's copper spacer and pill combos. After relflow, I was soldering the leads from the Convoy 5A driver, (this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32989372464.html) and accidentally touched one of the SST-20 domes with my iron apparently because 2/3 of it was hazy. It was the top center one in the picture below.
Well, when I touched the dome with an alcohol covered q-tip just to see if it would "buff out" somehow, the dome came right off cleanly. This is unlike what I've heard happens with hot dedoming white sst-20's, which need to be sliced instead of de-domed. I tested with multimeter and it lit up just like the two still left with domes intact, so I heated up the pill again slightly, not enough to flow solder, and then the other two domes just came off easily with tweezers.
Anyway, I tested all the LEDs with the multimeter again, finished building the pill, cleaned everything etc, and the de-domed red sst-20's worked fine. I don't have a domed version to compare to in terms of beam or increased throw/decreased lumens. It's still very floody with carclo narrow spot optics as a small triple. But, FYI, I found out by accident that red SST-20's can be completely de-domed with heat apparently.
I had to remove tiny bits of dome around the sides of the emitter surface with tweezers, toothpicks and compressed air after I took this picture being careful not go near the bond wires:
But, it was relatively simple once I realized my accident turned out to be non-fatal to the leds and potentially (?) increased throw a little. I mean, it has to since the surface of the led is smaller, right? I compared to a couple photo red xp-e2 lights I built and the red color was exactly the same to the eye, so I don't think it messed with that.
Also, at the tail on a rested but fully charged cell with that convoy driver, I got around 7.5A draw, so definitely pushing it to the limit on turbo.
I have one click set at 1%, second mode around 1.5 A, and third mode is full out 7.5, but I won't push it on third mode often because I know that's a lot of amps for red leds in a small light, and it's kind of overkill.
Nice thing about that driver is you can ramp it up to whatever you want, so I'll probably make the third and highest level something like 5A eventually or 60-70% of max because 7.5A is probably passed the point of diminishing returns. Also, I tried the hot de-dome a white sst-20 shortly after for a t20 zoomie, and the dome wouldn't budge at all like the red ones did so easily. So, I sliced it with a razor lubed with silicone and a washer:
Also good to know, the Sofirn 19mm mcpcb fits the T20 pill almost perfectly so you don't have to use a 16mm or sand down a 20mm.
Pill after soldering in driver and coloring everything black with sharpie as best I could for now, still purple where sharpie hadn't dried yet. Might go back and do matte thermal paint because the beam still has small artifacts or sand the surface of the led with 5000 grit. Any suggestions on perfecting an aspheric beam would be appreciated:
Repaired my broken modded DQQ Tiny III 18650.
I had converted it to a 3 amp triple emitter light 4 or 5 years ago. But then a couple years ago I decided to replace the driver I had in it with one with Emisar D4 ramping IOS firmware from Mountain Electronics.
Unfortunately, the mod failed to work properly. Even when the light was off, the LEDs stayed lit at a very low level. I finally gave up and put the mod aside for the last couple years.
Last night I took another stab at it. Remembered that the symptom I was experiencing of the light not quite turning off could be that the 7135 chip was bad. I swapped in a new one and now it works fine.
Nice light. A true pocket rocket with enormous punch on turbo and smaller than an FW3A. It’s so tiny! It’s just a bit bigger than a Sunwayman V11R (though it is heavier with battery installed due to heavier battery and steel bezel). With the new driver I no longer have to worry about the light overheating and desoldering the leadwires from the star.
Back when I started this mod, the best firmware I could get on a driver was RampingIOS. But things have moved on. Now I prefer Anduril. 
Next mod might be to disassemble it and reflash the star.
Some classic modding is happening in this thread, even a T20 mod, haven’t seen that one modded for years! 
Today I modded my GT Nano with a new led. In fact I ruined what the Nano is famous for: the throw went down from 21 kcd to 7 kcd after the mod. Still this is how I want my Nano to be. I ordered a 10440 tube for the Nano (was shipped out today :party: ), so that will complete the mod.
I have plenty cool lights with amazing throw that have the Osram KW CSLNM1-TG, so although the Nano does amaze, I have always wanted a throwy AAA size light with a great tint. So the led was swapped with a sliced 4000K SST-20 ( it had supposedly a JA3 tint bin before the slicing).
This was not straightforward because the SST-20 is 3535 size while the stock led is 3030 size. I decided on a new MCPCB, a 10mm DTP copper board that I bought long ago from vestureofblood’s shop. The edge needed trimming slightly to 9.5mm diameter with the disc-sander to fit in the slot in the shelf in the flashlight head. The board is a bit thicker than stock but I needed that extra height because the reflector hole was reamed and the reflector became a tiny bit shorter because of that.
As said I reamed the reflector to fit a 3535 center piece for 6.5mm hole. The reaming was not strictly needed because the stock reflector did fit a “butterfly” type of 3535 center piece but it had a bit of wiggle room so the led would not be really centered and I hate that. So I went for the gamble of reaming and hoping the 6.5mm center piece would fit before too much of the reflector was removed and it became too short with the led out of focus. I was lucky, the reflector was kept long enough and the focusing of the led appeared perfect, the hotspot is as crisp as it gets 
The outer edge of the center piece was trimmed a bit to make room for the solder blobs of the led wires.
Although everything was rather tiny, I did not destroy any crucial parts luckily and the mod was succesfully finished. The light is still pleasantly throwy, although it has not the same wow-factor of the stock light, and the tint turned out as nice as I hoped: the CCT is around 3750K, at medium setting CRI is 98, with 0.0005 duv it is right on the BBL, at turbo the CRI is still 95, with duv –0.0011.
Now wait for the 10440 tube to finish it, not only will it make the light look much better, the 10440 battery will get a bit more lumens out of the SST20 too, the 220 lumen it does now corresponds to about 1A, the 10440 battery will definitely do better than that.
Dang, that is nasty looking! Glad that it was a Sharpie and not an over cooked MCPCB.
And interesting how easy it is to de-dome a red SST-20.
Yeah, Neutralfan, the pic looks a lot worse than real life since it's un-dried black sharpie ink right after I tried to color the board black. I probably didn't get it right since there are still wrings and weird tint shifts in the beam possibly from reflections.
@Djozz, my t20 mod isn't exactly perfect so far. Any suggestions are appreciated, here's the problem:
I first had an XPL-HI in there, and there was some weird tint shift across zoom and flood. Fully zoomed in the center of the LED die was white hot, while the outside of the spot-beam had the weird cree tint shift and warmer tint. Then I tried 90 CRI 4000k XP-G3 in there (not sliced) and the classic cree green/weird tint shift in full zoom mode came out again with a weird, much cooler tint center. I tried this led because of some of your old posts from 5 years ago:
Now, with the sliced SST-20 in there, I have a weird beam that my phone camera can't really capture. Zoomed in, it looks like there is a white hot center beam, a small circle around the center where no light is present, and then some weird off-colored corona and rings around the led-shaped center. The center of the beam, which I crudely outlined in the photo below, is a perfect shaped of the led surface, like in most zoomies, but the tint is much colder than it should be, with rings all around it. Here are some pictures, but like I said, the camera does not at all capture what the eye sees in real life:
Any clue how to correct this, anyone? I don't know if it's an issue of stray reflections inside the lens from MCPCB and pill etc. I believe the led board is at the correct height and focus, since it's sitting on the same shelf as the original led in the same spot, only with a 3mm wider board. Should covering the led and painting everything else with matte black paint solve it? Maybe I have a bad T20 lens since three different leds gave me similar bad results?
Here's another where I drew a line indicting the space with not light at all, again the center is shaped like the emitter, which the picture does not show at all. I tried different modes and all sorts of things but nothing would capture the real beam as seen in person.
Basically, my goal is a T20 with a warm tint that doesn't have a white hot center or crazy rings around it. I prefer 3535 footprint since I soldered that mcpcb in, but I could easily get it out if there's better emitter for zoomies. CRI doesn't really matter as long as the tint is on the warmer side, 4k or a little less. I know there are much better hosts or completed lights out there for $30, but I have trouble getting rid of old hosts and prefer to mod them even though getting a convoy z1 or something like that is probably a better idea. Anyway, thanks for any suggestions.
Simple mod by BLF standards. Added GITD accents to an IF25A. Need to add more though, fades pretty quickly, but doesn’t go completely dim. Nice with night adapted vision.
Swapped a 2700k LH351D into a cheap zoomie my parents have because my mom doesn’t like cool “blue” tints. I did it more to play around with my new iron than anything. The light is fed off 3 aaas but I changed one of the aaas for a 10440 so the light is running 6v+ instead of the usual 4v 
Dunno what the driver is because it’s soldered to the pill. These aaas probably can’t provide enough current and dip far below 6v when the current is requested
Don’t mix chemistries like that. It’s going to run your AAA’s super low and could cause them to leak or bulge.
haven’t post anything for a while.
Been busy with all kind of mods.
So, first one...
ZL SC5w II, XPL emitter swapped with sliced dogfart 5000K.
I may have seen your reddit post 
Looks great!
Gas dedoming xhp50 goes wrong,but at least there’s no pwm 
I wonder whether Luxeon CZ would be a good match to GT Nano…
To preserve the wow-factor of the nano, it needs a led with a small die but also with very low voltage, to suck enough current out of those small batteries. The White Flat is very low voltage and so is the SST-20 that I swapped in, but I would not know about the Luxeon CZ, never tested one.
Further mods to my old DQG Tiny III the last few days.
I’d modded this one years ago into a triple XPL HI light with a 3 amp driver, but it was in need of upgrades:
- The switch was a bit too recessed, making activation quite difficult.
- The switch as I’d modified it previously used the original metal switch button over a retrofitted microswitch. It was not waterproof.
- The switch I used wasn’t very good and lacked a satisfying click when pressed.
- The driver I had installed with a 3 amp 17mm driver, set to 3 modes from Mountain Electronics. It worked, but clearly lacked some features available in more modern drivers. There was no moonlight or turbo mode. And there was no thermal senso. At 3 amps the light would get too hot to touch after a few minutes.
- The star was sitting on a strip of copper bent into a ring with a liberal amount of AS5 around the edges for heat transfer. I discovered the strip wasn’t quite thick enough so the star was loose. It was basically floating in place with just a small amount of AS5 at the edges. I discovered this when the star overheated and the driver wires desoldered themselves from it.
So I set about upgrading it.
- This one is a royal pain to mod. The manufacturer used a massive amount of threadlocker to attach the head to the body. I couldn’t get it off no matter what method I tried (unlike the DQG Tiny IV, which can be unscrewed). To mod the light I had previously used a dremel and burrowed out the center of the stock driver board leaving approximately 2mm left on all sides, with all components stripped from it. The new driver sits on the ledge left by the old board. Ground connection is via wire soldered from a part of the original board soldered to the new board.
- I dremeled out the switch compartment so I could fit a larger switch in. This worked, but my first attempt resulted in the button being too high and too easy to pressed. I removed it and installed a much flatter switch deep in the head of the lead to allow for a flatter switch button.
- I had a 17mm FET driver from Mountain Electronics laying around with Emisar D4 firmware on it. It came with a bad 7135 chip which I replaced. I also reflashed the firmware to Anduril. I spent many hours trying to get this driver to work right, but it just wasn’t happening. Either it wouldn’t work at all, or the 7135 chip wouldn’t work properly. I finally gave up and tried a different driver.
- Next driver attempt was a 20mm FET driver also from Mountain Electronics with D4 firmware installed. This one also came with a bad 7135 chip, which I replaced. I reflashed the firmware with Anduril and filed the edges of the driver down slightly so I could fit it into the battery tube. This time I fully tested the driver outside of the flashlight.
- Inserted the new driver… and it still didn’t work. GRRR. Turns out this time the problem was the wire from the MCU to the switch. Fortunately I was able to resolder it without having to redo the switch.
- Built a new copper platform for the star to sit on. Liberally applied AS5 around the sides of this housing and on top and on the edges of the star.
- The light had three 3D XPL HI hi in it. I swapped out one for 5D. I thought about going with high-CRI SST-20 or LH351D, but decided against it. This is a pocket rocket and XPL HI are more impressive.
- With all the soldering and desoldering I was doing trying to get this to work, my star was getting offly ratty looking. So much so that at some point the bondpad for the positive driver wire became damaged and I could no longer solder to it. The head is too small for a 20mm triple star, so swapping in a new one would have meant an hour with a handfile grinding it to size. Fortunately, the Noctigon star had little brass jumpers for selecting series or parallel. I used one of them as the new positive wire bondpad.
- Rebuilt the exterior switch components. The button is a piece of aluminum sheet glued to a piece of silicone. The silicone is glued to all edges of the switch compartment and makes the switch waterproof. The ring around the switch is a filed down nickel-plated brass finishing washer. Thermal epoxy, bits of aluminum strip, hobby paint colored to match the anodizing with a super-glue lacquer cover the tiny gaps at the lower edges of the switch ring.
Finally it works!
This light is tiny. It makes an Emisar D4 look huge. Even an FW3A looks big alongside. I notice DQG hasn’t come out with any lights in years. I wonder if they’ve gone under.
Here are some pictures next to a Sunwayman V11R triple. Note how the DQG is just a tiny bit bigger even though it uses a MUCH larger battery.
Here is a pic of the interior. As you can see it is a pain to work inside. The space is fairly small since the head could not be removed. And it was a royal mess due to all the Arctic Silver 5 from modding it. This picture is of the 17mm driver before I gave up on it.
Here is a picture of the shelf I made for the star. It is a single piece of copper and is soldered on the underside. I also made a copper washer to sit between this shelf and the star since the shelf wasn’t quite tall enough.
So far so good. The new switch has a satisfying click (well as much of one as you get with a tiny momentary pushbutton). Also due to its stiffness, small size, and slightly recessed position inside its protective ring it is unlikely this would activate in the pocket accidentally. Anduril UI is also a welcome improvement.
Do you have any pics of these comparisons to share?